Road rage becoming a huge problem in China

A woman rides her bicycle past a Mercedes Benz at a cross road in Beijing.

Wang Zhao, AFP/Getty Images

Road violence is growing along with China’s surge in vehicle ownership; more drivers buying SUVs for safety reasons

by
Craig Trudell, Bloomberg News | May 27, 2015

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Chinese drivers’ survival instincts are kicking in, leading analysts to ask if there’s a limit to the country’s explosive growth in sport-utility vehicle sales.

Concern for personal safety amid rising road rage is among the reasons China’s SUV registrations surged 48 per cent in the first quarter of this year, according to a research note Sanford C. Bernstein released Wednesday. SUVs accounted for 27 per cent of vehicles registered in the period, nearly twice the rate three years earlier, analysts led by Robin Zhu wrote.

Road violence is growing along with China’s 10-fold surge in vehicle ownership over the past decade. China’s security ministry issued a statement this month calling for drivers to act “civilized” and contain their anger, after a viral video showed a woman being dragged from her car and kicked in the face during an incident in the province of Sichuan.

“The angry ones are scaring the sane ones into buying SUVs for self defense,” Zhu, a Hong Kong-based senior analyst at Bernstein, said in an e-mail.

Lower gasoline prices and the poor condition of Chinese roads outside large cities are also among the likely reasons for the growing popularity of SUVs, according to the report. Although industry executives expect the shift to SUVs will continue in the near term, government fuel-economy rules and higher fuel prices will keep sedans from going extinct, Bernstein said.

More drivers in China scared of road rage are buying SUVs as a self-defence mechanism.

Also contributing to the shift is an expanding selection of cheap SUVs starting at less than 130,000 yuan (US$21,000). Domestic automakers will have introduced 49 such models this year and last year, according to the report.